When Stars Align Virtual Book Tour July 2011

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Join Carole Eglash-Kosoff, author of the historical fiction novel, When Stars Align (Author House), as she virtually tours the blogosphere July 5 – 29 2011 on her first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book!

About Carole Kosoff

An avid student of history, Carole Eglash-Kosoff is a native of Wisconsin. After graduating from UCLA, she spent her career in the apparel industry and teaching fashion retail, marketing, and sales at the college level. Her first book is The Human Spirit. She has also established the …a better way! Scholarship program, which provides money and mentoring for worthy high school students for both their first and second year of college. Carole Eglash-Kosoff lives and writes in Valley Village, California.

Her latest book is When Stars Align.

You can visit her website at www.whenstarsalign-thebook.com or connect with her at Facebook at www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=553077163.

About When Stars Align

Carole Eglash-Kosoff’s first novel, WHEN STARS ALIGN, is set in 19th century Louisiana, at a time and place where mixed-race relationships are both illegal and unacceptable. How can these defiant lovers–and their love–survive?

The time is a crucial period in American history–the Civil War and the years of Reconstruction following it–and the characters are Thaddeus and Amy, who share a forbidden love that can get them both killed. For he is a mulatto ex-slave, and she is white. In the novel, whenever Amy asks if she and Thaddeus will ever be together, his answer is “When stars align.”

The place is Louisiana, where Moss Grove, a large Mississippi River cotton plantation, has thrived from the use of slave labor while its owners lived lives of comfort and privilege. Thaddeus, conceived from the rape of a young field slave by the heir to the plantation, is raised as a Moss Grove house servant. His continued presence remains a thorn in the side of the man who sired him.

Deepening divisiveness between North and South launches the Civil War and changes Moss Grove in ways no one could have anticipated. With the war swirling, we see the battles and carnage through Thaddeus’ eyes.

After the Civil War ends, the period of Reconstruction begins, and there is a glimmer of hope for the former slaves: black legislators are elected and help to pass new laws. With the help of Union soldiers, schools are established to educate those who were formerly prohibited from learning to read. Medical clinics are opened; businesses are established. Hope flourishes. Thaddeus returns to Moss Grove and to Amy, hoping to share their newly won freedoms. Perhaps the stars will now finally align for the young lovers…

In 1876, however, in the most contested election in American history, the ex-Confederate states barter the selection of President Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for removal of all Union troops from their soil. Within a decade, hopes are dashed as Jim Crow laws are passed, the Ku Klux Klan launches new violence, and black progress is crushed.

Read the Excerpt!

Prologue

The setting sun drifted across the rutted dirt road grooved from repeated attacks of rain, hooves and wagon wheels. Small huts lined one side erratically, grey plumes of smoke stretching skyward from them, anxious to leave the noxious odors and poverty that gave birth to their temporal existence. The main house, the Master’s home, Moss Grove, was another hundred yards away, concealing itself from the squalor that was so necessary for it to function.

Rose’s body ached as the small buggy lurched first one way, then another, seeking purchase from the mud and slurry that slowed its journey. Her strength still wasn’t up to the six hour trip so soon after giving birth. She nestled the unfamiliar tiny breathing mass in her arms…a baby boy, blue-eyed with soft downy mocha skin. She hadn’t stopped staring at him since she gave birth four days ago. Born from so much pain and shame it was almost as if God was apologizing for the anguish he’d bestowed on her. She wanted to hate that part of the child she recognized in the father, the long fingers, the arched strong eyebrows, but most of all those electric blue eyes that stared at her in an unnerving fashion from the first moment they opened and looked into her eyes. She would never forget being thrown onto the ground, her legs being pushed apart and staring into the icy blue eyes of Henry Rogers. Only a few years older than her, he was strong and arrogant, as he forced himself into her. He was also white. She tried to scream but he slapped her. Seconds later he let out a gasp, stood and smiled as he climbed back onto his horse. He left without a glance or a word while she lay there, crying at the pain and frightened by the blood and dirt spotting her thin cotton dress.

Rose had been away from Moss Grove for more than a month. Massa’ Rogers, Moss Grove’s patriarch, had ordered that she be sent away to have this child that was such an embarrassment. She would have preferred to stay in her small cabin in Moss Grove’s slave quarters. She’d be with people she knew but no one asked nor cared about her preferences. She had been put into a wagon and taken to the home of Massa’ Rogers’s kin near Baton Rouge to bear him a nigger grandchild, for Lord’s sake. The servants there had treated her kindly. They set her in a room of her own in the back of the house. It was clean and dry and even had a real glass window. It was more than she’d had her entire life and when it was time for the baby to come out they fussed over her as if she were their own kin.

As the small buggy and its cargo rode closer to the house it pulled to a stop. Two women waited at the side of the path. Rose recognized the slightly taller one. It was Sarah, Moss Grove’s house Mammy. The other, a slave woman that Rose had seen but never met, was a little shorter, a little more bent, stood next to her, head and shoulders cloaked in a shabby black wool shawl. Both women looked grim as their sad eyes tracked the buggy’s slow approach. The last embers of the day were the only light illuminating the scene.

“Rose! How you feelin’?” Sarah asked gently, moving closer.

“I be fine, I guess. I’m not sure what to do with this little package the Lord Jesus brung me.”

“Ain’t no need to worry, youngster. Hand him to me,” Sarah said, reaching her arms up.

“I don’t wanna let go of him. He a part of me. He look at me and he knows I is his mama.” Rose’s voice began to quake as words and tears mingled in her throat.

“Rose, just give me the baby. You too young to even produce milk for him. He need a strong teat and someone who know how to care for a new born.”

“I learn, Miss Sarah. I learn quick. You know ‘ah is bright.”

“You’ll have more. Big, strong ‘uns. When you’re older and you’ll have the baby’s daddy to help.”

“But I carried this un’. This ‘un is mine….mine,” Rose pleaded.

“Rose, go back to your cabin and forget this baby. Massa’ Jedidiah has other plans for him.”

Sarah nodded to the driver. The man stood and with a gentle firmness he took the baby from Rose’s grasp and passed him to Sarah. He hated being involved in these women’s troubles. All that cryin’. The infant began to wail at the events he shared but would never comprehend. Rose’s body shook, every nerve electric, unable to catch her breath. Her new son was being taken from her. She thought she might die giving birth and now she was almost sorry that she hadn’t.

Sarah stared back at the young black slave girl. She understood what Rose had gone through to bear this child but she had her instructions. She passed the baby to the woman who watched silently and would act as a mid-wife and surrogate mother and whose breasts would nourish the infant.

The wagon turned and headed back toward the slave’s quarters. Rose watched the two women trudge slowly away from her toward the house, holding her son against the evening’s chill and muffling the cries that grew more muted each step away from her.

A horned owl left its perch, disturbed by the noise below. As it soared over the trees seeking an evening meal, its mournful sounds blended into a plaintive duet with the infant’s sobs.

Soon the wagon stopped and the driver ordered Rose to get down. The young girl was inert, unable to move.

“Get’cha self down, ah has to get up early and head back to Baton Rouge,” the driver said.

The young girl obeyed as if in a trance and squatted on the ground where she landed. Her body hung motionless in the black moonless night as her soul screamed with the maternal hunger of eons. She had lost her first born child.

When Stars Align Virtual Book Tour Schedule

Tuesday, July 5

Book reviewed at Life in Review

“I very highly recommend this book. The story is rich with historical detail and covers a fairly wide span of time. We watch babies born and grow up into adults with their own relationships and futures. It is a very moving drama. It’s fast-paced and definitely a page-turner! In these turbulent times, life and love were precious. Things didn’t always turn out happily-ever-after. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the author’s writing.”

Interviewed LIVE at Barry “Storyheart” Eva’s A Book and a Chat Radio Show

Wednesday, July 6

Guest blogging at The Story Behind the Book

“The effects of the Compromise of 1877 is rarely studied and yet it changed the course of America’s society for nearly a century.”

Thursday, July 7

Interviewed at Beyond the Books

“My current work is a work of love and passion and I’m very proud of it.”

Friday, July 8

Interviewed at As the Pages Turn

“Yes, plantation life usually was not as extreme as described in Gone With The Wind or Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Monday, July 11

Interviewed at The Hot Author Report

“I find creating bad characters difficult…I always want to give them some reason or redeeming feature.”

Tuesday, July 12

Interviewed at Examiner

“Writing the book is only one of your tasks. You must be prepared to undertake the hard work of marketing it nationally.”

Wednesday, July 13

Book spotlight at Book Marketing Buzz

Thursday, July 14

Interviewed at Review From Here

“When Stars Align tells about a mostly forgotten but critical turning point in history…the rise and collapse of racial equality within a decade. It is a compelling love story set against true events.”

Monday, July 18

Guest blogging at Colloquium

Tuesday, July 19

Guest blogging at The Book Bin

“This new era of blogs and social media offer new challenges to self-marketing but a good story will always be read.”

Wednesday, July 20

Book reviewed at Colloquium

Thursday, July 21

Interviewed at American Chronicle

Friday, July 22

Guest blogging at Literal Exposure

Monday, July 25

Book reviewed at Mad Moose Mama

Tuesday, July 26

Book reviewed at Between the Pages

Thursday, July 28

Book reviewed at Celtic Lady’s Reviews

Friday, July 29

Chat with Carole Eglash-Kosoff at Pump Up Your Book Live! July 2011 Authors on Tour Chat/Book Giveaway Party (link coming soon)

Carole Kosoff’s WHEN STARS ALIGN VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR ‘10 will officially begin on July 5 and end on July 29 ’11. Please contact Dorothy Thompson at thewriterslife(at)gmail.com if you are interested in hosting and/or reviewing her book or click here to use the form. Thank you!

If you would like to book your own virtual book tour with us, click here to find out how!

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Question of the Day

How do you make sales happen for you?

A lot of hard work! I sponsor a lot of on line parties, festivals and contests. Book sales don’t magically happen, believe me. An author has to work hard to earn her readers. And then she has to work hard to keep them by giving them something they’ll enjoy reading. I try hard to make my books worth a reader’s time.

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